


that long forgotten feeling of her

by verynearlysouffled



Category: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cursed Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time), F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-19 11:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22676941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verynearlysouffled/pseuds/verynearlysouffled
Summary: James Gamwell is being haunted by the face of a woman. Blonde, pretty, regal. Except he’s sure he’s never seen her before in his life.(or, how a cursed Will Scarlet in Storybrooke becomes fixated on (but can't quite remember) Anastasia, so puts pencil to paper and sketches the portrait from episode 11).
Relationships: Knave of Hearts | Will Scarlet/Red Queen | Anastasia
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	that long forgotten feeling of her

**Author's Note:**

> i actually impulse wrote this like a year ago, but i never posted it and now im back on my scarlet queen shit and i felt the need to share ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ so a quick edit and here we are! it’s only short, but i’m rather fond of it tbh. character introspection and unnecessary headcanons that no one else cares about are my bread and butter, especially for the characters that get so little love from canon like will scarlet.
> 
> title is from cold chisel's 'flame trees'. it was almost going to be a different classic aussie rock song, but i had to resist. 'am i ever gonna see your face again (no way get fucked fuck off)', while accurate and a bit funny for us aussies, would have been an incredibly long title.

James Gamwell was being haunted. Not literally, of course. He wasn’t an idiot, ghosts didn’t exist. But there was a face that seemed to follow him. He was having dreams (not _that_ sort), and a blonde head in a crowd had the ability to make him stop short.

Why, he wasn’t quite sure.

He wasn’t much for socialising. He’d work his shifts at the bar, do a bit of extra less-than-legal things on the side, and come home to an empty home that suited him to the ground.  James wasn’t sure he even knew any blonde women well enough to be thinking of them. The dreams and images had started right about when that Swan woman came to town, but he was sure it wasn’t her that he saw.

So he started sketching. Each day he’d remember a little more of the face. Blue eyes that he somehow knew would crinkle when she smiled, although she rarely was when he thought of her. Her features were sharp, with high cheekbones. Thick lips he could almost remember kissing, but the memory came short. Golden hair that was high on her head in a tight bun, but he could just about feel his fingers running through the soft locks.

James added a crown, and elegant jewellery. He didn’t know why, but they had demanded to be included once he’d begun. Once or twice in his dreams he’d seen her in a pink dress, but that looked nothing like the woman he was drawing on paper. He thought again that maybe he was being haunted, and she was from medieval times, but that didn’t feel right. James didn’t remember going to a renaissance fair, but maybe that’s what it was. He could have just been drunk.

It didn’t take long to finish it. It had almost crafted itself onto the paper. He’d never remembered being very artistic, but it had felt quite natural to put pencil to paper. Seeing it like this, complete, made a sick feeling fill his gut. So he shoved it in a drawer, pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and drank deeply. He needed that face gone, that weird sensation in his chest to disappear, that memory of a dream to disappear.

The next day, after only a few hours at work in the bar, Will Scarlet came home. If he thought his brain was busy yesterday, that was nothing on the two lives crammed in there now. James Gamwell. Will Scarlet. He was both of them, somehow.

And that woman, she had a name. Anastasia. A swig of whiskey and he was rifling through drawers to find it again. It didn’t take long before he had it pinned to the wall, right in the spot he could _feel_ it needed to go. Will didn’t need to pull back the wall to know that’s where _it_ had ended up the past twenty-eight years. He took another swig straight from the bottle, the burn of the liquor barely registering.

There was shouts and screams in the street below him, reuniting families and an immense witch hunt for the woman who caused it all, but he didn’t care for any of that. There was no one for him to find in that crowd, and he couldn’t care less right now to hunt down the Evil Queen. 

So he played darts.


End file.
